The culture personality school of thought began principally in the United States inthe 1930s.The above school explained relationships between childrearing customs and human behaviours in different societies. The culture personality theory combined elements of psychology, anthropology, and sociology, but principally the theory involved the application of psychoanalytic principles to ethnographic data. •culture herein is used to mean any knowledge that a person/individual has acquired as a member of his/her society . •Personality is a patterned body of habits, traits, attitudes and ideas of
an individual as these are organised externally into roles and statuses and as they relate internally to motivation, goals and various aspects of selfhood. •Ralph Linton (1945) defines personality as the individual’s
mental qualities the sum total of his rational faculties, perceptions, ideas, habits and conditional emotional responses. He states that there is a close relation between personality and culture of the society to which the individual belongs. The personality of every individual within the society develops and functions in constant association with its culture.
The school emphasised the cultural moulding of the personality and focused on the development of the individual. Culture-and-personality theorists argued that personality types were created in socialisation, and they placed particular emphasis on child-rearing practices such as feeding, weaning, and toilet training. The pioneers of this school of thought were students of Franz Boas and Kroeber. They include American anthropologists like Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Linton, Kardiner and CoraDuBois.
The schools studies
- Impact of culture on personality
- Impact of personality on culture
- Types of personalities > Basic personality , Modal personality , National character studies